January 12th, 2014
A preternaturally smooth flight in bright sunlight…

… over the great plains has the word “bountiful” buzzing in UD‘s brain. This obviously bountiful land, even under patches of snow.

Bountiful Chicago, where a glowing plaid-clad Burberry store appeared in UD‘s hotel window – and behind the Burberry was the lake, ice-blue, iced-in, beautifully silent behind the city noise. How can it be said that UD still knows this city, so generous to her with adventure and love many years ago? This is America, bountiful and changeable, and you can walk down Michigan Avenue and gaze at the ice chunks in the Chicago River, and, except for the Trib Tower, you can find the streetscape entirely strange.

The strangeness is fine with me – it does me good to feel the nervy vitality Saul Bellow described… And didn’t I once find myself driving next to him (I still drove then), north from Hyde Park on Lake Shore Drive? He was in a derelict little BMW – green, as I recall – and I kept glancing over at his thin white hair, his hard-set lips. A Chicago moment – chronicling my life in that city while racing next to perhaps its greatest chronicler. That was sweet.

February 6th, 2013
Coyotes cavort…

… on the campus of UD‘s beloved University of Chicago.

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